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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C S Lewis

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Friday, 9 November 2012

I'm Pro-MYOFB

So the Downfall parody vid is doing pretty good -- seventh-most popular post on this blog as of this writing. The YouTube video has had over 1,000 views in the past two days, which isn't bad considering that the Downfall meme is more than a bit overused. To everyone who posted the vid on their blogs, on Twitter, shared it on Facebook, and posted it on various sites and forums, thank you very much. And there has been nary a peep out of the tobacco control industry, except for this tweet by The Root of All Evil.

Thanks for the plug, Root!

Well, I knew he wouldn't be able to resist tweeting about it. After all, he's mentioned in the parody, and any mention of his name, positive or negative, seems to please him. Because his ego is the size of a galaxy. At least he said it was "amusing" and that was quite generous. I suppose he was hoping his legions of Twitter followers would dash to the YouTube player page and click the dislike button, but there are only 8 dislikes so far. Perhaps that's because even some of the anti-smokers out there realise that the parody is funny. Or perhaps only about 8 people actually bothered to read Chapman's tweet. Whatever.

But the master of spin and propaganda has erred twice in his tweet.

A minor error here, granted, but he should have written "pro-smoker's" instead of adding the possessive apostrophe after the letter S. Pro-smokers' is a possessive of a plural, and implies that there was more than one person who created this parody, and that's not true. This is mine alone. Before it was uploaded to YouTube, I did send it off to two people for their feedback and proofing, and their comments were incredibly useful in helping me create the final video. When you write or create something, you get too close to it and miss obvious mistakes, so another set or two of eyes is vital. To my two proofers, thank you very much for your help.

The other error The Root of All Evil wrote is: "The same crowd who stopped the smoking ban in pubs (not)." There was no crowd in 2006. Everyone had been led to believe that there would be exemptions for pubs, clubs and restaurants. We all could have lived with the public smoking ban just fine if those exemptions had been left in place, as originally intended. But the anti-smokers in Parliament deceived and betrayed all of us and deleted those exemptions without even consulting the public. It was only after that happened that bloggers and others began to speak out about the public smoking ban. We have never been given an opportunity to challenge the ban, and that forms a large part of why we're disenfranchised and angry.

Smokers are a varied group, from all social, working and political classes. Before the smoking ban, before the holy and righteous crusade of denormalisation, we did not align ourselves under the colour of SMOKER. We were just everyday people who also smoked. It was the anti-smokers who created us and categorised us as filthy, dirty, baby-killing smokers. This was not our decision.

We could fight off the public smoking ban, though. As Frank Davis often writes, there are more than enough of us to do so, if only we got together and made it happen. Yet, I suppose we'll have to wait some time for this to occur. Perhaps when the doors to the gas chambers are at last opened, smokers may finally be motivated to stand up against the evil tobacco control industry.

Semantically, "pro-smoker" is also incorrect. I don't identify as a
pro-smoker. I identify myself as "pro-Mind Your Own Fucking Business." I'm pro-MYOFB. I don't care if you smoke or don't. I don't care if you drink or not. I don't care who you sleep with or what you do for work. It's your life to live as best as you see fit. It's not mine. Who am I to tell you what to do or how to live? What right does anyone have to do that? It is the apex of human arrogance to dictate and enforce your belief systems on others -- it is, of course, our nature to do so. It is also our greatest human flaw.

This concept of letting people live their own lives, without undue interference from those who seek to control you, is lost on the prohibitionists -- all of them believe in their cause so blindly that they fail to see themselves as the tyrants they have become. They believe they are righteous. But their tyranny is neither righteous nor benevolent. It's damaging our society by hateful degrees, turning people against people for no other reason than to sate their egos and validate their existences as nannying tyrant control freaks.

Perhaps being a public health zealot is addictive. You know, that rush one gets when they are in control of another's life -- perhaps these shitbags are addicted to controlling other people. That must be it. They must be addicted, because they seem unable to stop themselves from doing so.